Jakebrake Loc: Broomfield, CO

From The American Spectator this morning

I realize it's somewhat lengthy and hopefully our libby friends can get through, and understand it~

by PATRICK O'HANNIGAN

The Raleigh News & Observer contributor J. Peder Zane is a piñata who lends a patina of bipartisanship to a progressive editorial page where other writers claim the moral high ground. In an opinion column published July 31 and updated since, the N&O’s token conservative attracted a level of reader ire unusual even for him by asserting that a false narrative linked the GOP and r****m.

Republicans who understand history accept that statement as unvarnished fact, the frustrating reflection of a mal-educated era in which it’s considered bad form even to identify ancient Greece as the cradle of Western civilization.

But the N&O editorial page caters to home-grown Democrats and progressive retirees who’ve migrated to its circulation area from colder climes. It also competes in an unspoken “woke Olympics” with a free weekly tabloid and the Chamber of Commerce-style marketing magazines aimed at adjunct professors for North Carolina’s marquee universities. None of those constituencies were amused by Zane’s thesis, especially because he used it as the opening salvo in a spirited defense of Donald Trump.

Zane pointed out that it’s not unusual for Democrats and Democrat operatives to call Republican presidents r****t. “Before Trump,” he observed, “Democrats leveled the same despicable smear against Mitt Romney.” He recalled the speech in which then-Vice President Joe Biden warned African Americans that if Romney became president, he “would put y’all back in chains!” Zane also mentioned the NAACP TV ad that in 2000 blamed George W. Bush for the murder of James Byrd, a black man chained to a truck and d**gged to his death by w***e s*********ts.


Outrage meters redlined among more excitable readers when Zane upped the ante by suggesting that “the Democrat deck has always included 52 race cards.” He also engaged in a bit of Dinesh D’Souza-style myth-busting by saying that the idea that Democrats in the 1960s “knowingly surrendered their hold on the South to advance the cause of civil rights” was “humbug.”

Of President Trump, Zane wrote that he “criticizes specific individuals and organizations with which he has a particular beef.” His contention was that such criticism, while often ham-fisted, is not broad-brush enough to be called r****t. The obvious subtext was that Elijah Cummings doesn’t deserve a pass on the sorry condition of the West Baltimore district he represents just because he’s a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. Beyond that, heart-rending stories of tribulation at the southern border of the United States are not excuse enough to ignore i*********n l*w.

Although Zane did not make this comparison, our current president is arguably no more bigoted than his immediate predecessor, the so-called “racial healer” (Remember the “Beer Summit”?) who declined to prosecute the New Black Panthers for v**er intimidation in Philadelphia and dismissed his own maternal grandmother as a “typical white person.”

Zane’s column had carnival barker flourishes, but it was logical. More interesting for our purposes here was the reaction he got from readers, as made manifest in comments attached to his piece. One claimed that Trump had to be r****t because (among other things) he “still refuses to acknowledge the innocence of the Central Park 5” — as though the Netflix miniseries that painted those men as victims was t***h rather than progressive agitprop. Another reader settled for calling Zane “a lousy writer and a pathetic stooge.” There were echoes of the same insult in a comment suggesting that continued publication of Zane’s columns “shows the moral vacuum occupied by all Trumpsters.”

What passed for civility came from a Concern Troll who said, “Try looking at things that Trump has said and done before you write” because “Facts can be your friend.” That snark was funny in an “own goal” kind of way because Zane’s argument included four paragraphs looking specifically at things that Trump has said and done.

The common thread among critics of Zane’s column was ad hominem hyperbole, and it appears to have taken root in progressivism, to the detriment of both language and logic (“R****ts think Trump is a r****t, and people who are victims of r****m think Trump is a r****t: QED,” claimed one UNC Chapel Hill alumnus who generalizes freely on the strength of never having met such victims of r****m as conservative commentators Michelle Malkin and Candace Owens). Trump Derangement Syndrome is real, myopic, and virulent, so you can find the same strain of hysterical disdain outside North Carolina, in high school textbooks and places frequented by fading hopefuls like Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, for example.

One need not wonder what the people who call J. Peder Zane a “stooge” would say about an elegant prose stylist like Conrad Black, who has the temerity to point out that Donald Trump is doing what he said he would do. Fomenting racial discord is not on the Trump agenda and never has been. But perhaps the “problem” is that Donald Trump too obviously enjoyed thwarting Hillary Clinton’s ambitions. That and his failure to genuflect before progressive shibboleths that Barack Obama never thought to question make Donald Trump a marked man for many people.

Lonewolf

You can tell just how republicans love people with brown skin by the number of then in the republican Congress! The only one's at trump rallies are paid and most likely offered security so they can get out of there alive

Jakebrake Loc: Broomfield, CO

Aw lil wolfie, you are losing it man! Hispanic unemployment the lowest in history. Explain that to me lil feller~

The Critical Critic Loc: Turtle Island

.

Jakebrake Loc: Broomfield, CO

Whew, taking no prisoners today are we Critical? Don't expect wolfie to come back. He runs and hides when his libtoid bulls**t is exposed.~

The Critical Critic Loc: Turtle Island

Lol, nope! I like to pay special attention to wolfie.

Jakebrake Loc: Broomfield, CO

Unfortunately I still have to regard poor lil wolfie as a brother because he did serve in the Marines. What makes me so sad, is where did he go so wrong with his libtoid (libtoid rhymes with hemorrhoid) ideology?

The Critical Critic Loc: Turtle Island

Indeed, sir. It’s also my only reason for being relatively civil with him.

Jakebrake Loc: Broomfield, CO

And I as well~

lpnmajor Loc: Arkansas

If as many people apologized, rationalized and made excuses for Obama as they are doing for Trump.................we wouldn't have had to suffer..........................Trump.

Rose42

There were as many who did the same for Obama and they also elevated him to something he never was.

We are suffering Trump partly because of Obama and in larger part to people being s**k of what had been going on in Washington for many years.